Touchdown! Huge NASA Rover Lands on Mars Touchdown! Huge NASA Rover Lands on Mars By Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer | August 6, 2012 01:30am ET MORE This artist concept features NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover, a mobile robot for investigating Mars' past or present ability to sustain microbial life. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech NASA's biggest, most ambitious roving explorer landed on Mars Aug. 5 to investigate whether the Red Planet was ever habitable to life. Here's the latest: Curiosity Rover's Descent Images Reach Earth | Video PASADENA, Calif. — A car-size NASA rover touched down on the Martian surface late Sunday night (Aug. 5), executing a stunning series of maneuvers that seem pulled from the pages of a sci-fi novel. News of the 1-ton Curiosity rover 's successful landing came in at 10:31 p.m. PDT Sunday (1:31 a.m. EDT and 0517 GMT Monday), though the robot actually touched down inside Mars ' huge Gale Crater around 10:17 p.m.

(It takes about 14 minutes for signals to travel from the Red Planet to Earth). "Touchdown confirmed. We're safe on Mars!" a mission controller announced to deafening cheers here at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Rover team members leapt to their feet to hug and high-five each other. Then, a few minutes later, Curiosity's first photo — a fuzzy thumbnail showing one of the huge rover's six wheels on the Martian surface — came down to Earth, sparking another eruption of emotion. Credit: NASA Curiosity survived a harrowing and unprecedented journey to the Red Planet's surface. After hurtling into the Martian atmosphere at 13,000 mph late Sunday (21,000 kph), Curiosity's spacecraft deployed an enormous supersonic parachute to slow down to 200 mph (320 kph) or so. The vehicle then fired rockets to slow its descent further, to less than 2 mph (3.2 kph). Then the craziness began. A rocket-powered sky crane lowered Curiosity to the Martian surface on cables, then flew off and crash-landed intentionally a safe distance away after the rover's six wheels hit the red dirt.

The ambitious maneuver capped a landing sequence that NASA officials have dubbed " seven minutes of terror ." With the landing, the Curiosity rover wrapped up an eight-month voyage across 352 million miles to reach Mars, where the robot now faces an ambitious two-year mission. Word of the touchdown came via NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter, which relayed signals from Curiosity to Earth. Curiosity couldn't ping Earth directly, because Mars' rotation took the rover out of contact with our planet just before it landed. [ Photos: How Curiosity's Crazy Landing Works ] The successful landing is a huge moment for NASA and the future of robotic planetary exploration, which is imperiled by budget cuts. NASA is counting on Curiosity's $2.5 billion mission — which is officially known as the Mars Science Laboratory, or MSL — to generate excitement about the agency's exploration efforts and, perhaps, bring some of the lost funding back. "We're on Mars again," NASA chief Charlie Bolden said just minutes after Curiosity touched down. "It doesn't get any better than this." JPL technicians react to the news that Curiosity has landed on Mars, August 6, 2012.

Credit: NASA TV Assessing Martian habitability Curiosity can now get to work. Its main task is to determine if the Gale Crater area is, or ever was, capable of supporting microbial life. It sports 10 scientific instruments to aid in this task, including a rock-zapping laser and gear that can identify organic compounds, the carbon-containing building blocks of life as we know it. A mysterious 3-mile-high (5 kilometer) mountain called Mount Sharp rises from Gale's center. Mount Sharp's many layers preserve a record of Mars' environmental conditions going back perhaps 1 billion years or more, scientists say. Curiosity will read these layers like a book to gain insights about how the Red Planet has changed over time. Mars-orbiting spacecraft have spotted signs of clays and sulfates — materials known to form in the presence of water — in Mount Sharp's lower reaches. Since all life on Earth is intimately tied to water, Curiosity will doubtless spend a lot of time poking around the mound's base.

But the MSL team also wants the rover to climb high enough to reach the mountain's drier layers, so it can help investigate why Mars transitioned from a relatively warm and wet planet to the frigid and dry world we know today. "Something happened on Mars, and it went dry, and that's what we have today," MSL chief scientist John Grotzinger, of Caltech in Pasadena, told SPACE.com. "The question is, what was that event? What was that trigger? What happened environmentally? My hope is that we'll get some insight into this Great Desiccation Event." [ 7 Biggest Mysteries of Mars ] To cross the wet-dry threshold, Curiosity will likely have to climb about 2,300 feet (700 meters) up Mount Sharp. But that shouldn't be too difficult, as the mountain has relatively gentle slopes, like the huge volcanoes of Hawaii, Grotzinger said. In fact, it's possible the rover could clamber all the way to Mount Sharp's top, given enough time, officials have said. But this mountaineering feat isn't high on the MSL team's list of priorities right now.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/UA Taking it slow Curiosity's not quite ready to go roving yet. The robot's handlers must first perform a series of checkouts to make sure the rover and its instruments are in good working condition on the Martian surface. It will likely be two to four weeks before Curiosity begins "contact science" operations, said MSL project manager Pete Theisinger of JPL. Such work involves examining rocks and soil with the rover's Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer and its Mars Hand Lens Imager, which functions like a high-powered magnifying glass. It will probably be one to two months before Curiosity drops the first soil samples into its internal analytical instruments, Theisinger added. And the rover likely won't be ready to start the drive toward Mount Sharp for two or three months, Grotzinger said. "On Sunday night, at 10:32, OK, we will have a priceless, priceless asset that we have placed on the surface of another planet that could last a long time if we operate it correctly," Theisinger told reporters Thursday (Aug. 2).

"And so we will be cautious as hell about what we do with it." Curiosity's prime mission is slated to last one Martian year, or roughly two Earth years. But the rover's plutonium power source could keep it going for a decade or more, provided key parts don't break down. Such longevity wouldn't be unprecedented for a NASA Mars rover. The twin robots Spirit and Opportunity , after all, were supposed to explore the Red Planet for three months when they touched down in January 2004. Spirit stopped communicating with Earth in March 2010, and Opportunity is still going strong. "We are going to have the opportunity for untold discoveries," Doug McCuistion, head of NASA's Mars Exploration program, said before Curiosity's landing Sunday. "It's going to be exciting, with years of exploration coming." Helping save NASA planetary science NASA is expecting big things from Curiosity. The rover's discoveries should help lay the foundation for a concerted life-detection mission, which would likely involve sending samples of Martian soil and rock to Earth for study, agency officials have said. Martian sample-return would likely cost several billion dollars, however, putting it out of NASA's reach for the forseeable future.

The space agency temporarily shelved all plans for such ambitious, expensive "flagship" planetary missions after the White House released its 2013 federal budget request in February. This request cut NASA's planetary science efforts by 20 percent, from $1.5 billion this year to $1.2 billion next year, with further cuts expected in the coming years. Much of this money will come out of the agency's Mars program, which sees its funding fall from $587 million this year to $360 million in 2013, and then to just $189 million in 2015. But NASA thinks this budget outlook could improve if Curiosity performs as advertised. Curiosity's discoveries might generate enough enthusiasm among the public and politicians to restore some of the lost funding, officials have said. "I think the way to recover the program is to have a much broader community understand the value, and we have a huge opportunity with MSL landing — where there'll be a lot of visibility, some real discoveries, some really interesting discoveries — to talk about the exciting work that leverages the science," John Grunsfeld, NASA's associate administrator for science, said in March.

Curiosity launched from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Nov. 26, 2011. The mission was originally slated to blast off in 2009, but technical setbacks pushed things back two years to the next available Mars launch window. Visit SPACE.com for complete coverage of NASA's Mars rover landing . Follow senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall or SPACE.com @Spacedotcom . We're also on Facebook and Google+ . Editor's Recommendations NASA Rover's New Red Planet Address: Yellowknife, Mars NASA Rover's New Red Planet Address: Yellowknife, Mars Mike Wall Share View photos These are the first two full-resolution images of the Martian surface from the Navigation cameras on NASA's Curiosity rover, which are located on the rover's "head" or mast. The rim of Gale Crater can be seen in the distance beyond the pebbly g More The patch of Mars where NASA's Curiosity rover touched down Sunday night (Aug. 5) has a name: Yellowknife. The moniker is a tribute to the capital of Canada's Northwest Territories, a city that has long served as the jumping-off point for geologists interested in studying North America's oldest rocks , scientists said.

"If you ask, 'What is the port of call you leave from to go on the great missions of geological mapping to the oldest rocks in North America?' — it's Yellowknife," Curiosity chief scientist John Grotzinger, of Caltech in Pasadena, told reporters Friday (Aug. 10). In the home stretch of Curiosity's eight-month space cruise, Grotzinger and his team divided the rover's predicted landing zone inside Mars' Gale Crater into a set of 151 "quadrangles," each of which measures about 1 mile (0.6 km) on a side. The idea was to break the work of characterizing the landing zone into manageable chunks. The Curiosity rover landed on Quadrangle 51, which the team has dubbed Yellowknife. Curiosity's main mission is to determine if the Gale Crater area could ever have supported microbial life. Mars appears hostile to Earth-like life today, at least on the surface. But things might have been different in the past, which is why the rover team is drawing connections with the 2.7-billion-year-old rocks of northwest Canada.

"We went to Mars to really get at the ancient geology, because that's where we think there might be evidence for past environments similar to on Earth," said Curiosity deputy project scientist Joy Crisp, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "So it's connected in that way — simply, ancient rocks that might preserve evidence of past environments favorable for life." Curiosity will likely be in Yellowknife for a while (the rover won't even take its first drive for two weeks or so), but eventually the six-wheeled robot will leave the quadrangle to explore more of Gale and to investigate Mount Sharp, the mysterious 3-mile-high (5 km) mountain that rises from the crater's center. The mission team is not in a big rush. Curiosity's prime mission is slated to last about two Earth years, and the rover's nuclear power source may keep it roaming for considerably longer than that if no key parts break down, researchers have said.

Curiosity Rover's New Address: Yellowknife, Mars NASA Rover's New Red Planet Address: Yellowknife, Mars By Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer | August 14, 2012 11:45pm ET MORE Before Curiosity landed on Mars, scientists divided its potential landing zone into 151 "quadrangles" measuring about 1 mile on a side. Curiosity landed on quadrangle 51, which is now known as Yellowknife. Credit: NASA/ JPL-Caltech The patch of Mars where NASA's Curiosity rover touched down Sunday night (Aug. 5) has a name: Yellowknife. The moniker is a tribute to the capital of Canada's Northwest Territories, a city that has long served as the jumping-off point for geologists interested in studying North America's oldest rocks , scientists said. "If you ask, 'What is the port of call you leave from to go on the great missions of geological mapping to the oldest rocks in North America?' — it's Yellowknife," Curiosity chief scientist John Grotzinger, of Caltech in Pasadena, told reporters Friday (Aug. 10).

In the home stretch of Curiosity's eight-month space cruise, Grotzinger and his team divided the rover's predicted landing zone inside Mars' Gale Crater into a set of 151 "quadrangles," each of which measures about 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) on a side. The idea was to break the work of characterizing the landing zone into manageable chunks. The Curiosity rover landed on Quadrangle 51, which the team has dubbed Yellowknife. Curiosity's main mission is to determine if the Gale Crater area could ever have supported microbial life. Mars appears hostile to Earth-like life today, at least on the surface. But things might have been different in the past, which is why the rover team is drawing connections with the 2.7-billion-year-old rocks of northwest Canada. This is the first 360-degree panoramic view from NASA's Curiosity rover on Mars as seen by its mast navigation cameras. The fuzzy photos on the ends are lower-resolution. Scientists expect a high-res version of the image in upcoming days. Released Aug. 8, 2012.

Credit: NASA "We went to Mars to really get at the ancient geology, because that's where we think there might be evidence for past environments similar to on Earth," said Curiosity deputy project scientist Joy Crisp, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "So it's connected in that way — simply, ancient rocks that might preserve evidence of past environments favorable for life." Curiosity will likely be in Yellowknife for a while (the rover won't even take its first drive for two weeks or so), but eventually the six-wheeled robot will leave the quadrangle to explore more of Gale and to investigate Mount Sharp, the mysterious 3-mile-high (5 km) mountain that rises from the crater's center. The mission team is not in a big rush. Curiosity's prime mission is slated to last about two Earth years, and the rover's nuclear power source may keep it roaming for considerably longer than that if no key parts break down, researchers have said.

NASA Lands Car-Size Rover Beside Martian Mountain | Mars News NASA Lands Car-Size Rover Beside Martian Mountain Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) team The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) team in the MSL Mission Support Area react after learning the the Curiosity rove has landed safely on Mars and images start coming in at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Mars, Sunday, Aug. 5, 2012 in Pasadena, Calif. The MSL Rover named Curiosity was designed to assess whether Mars ever had an environment able to support small life forms called microbes. PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's most advanced Mars rover Curiosity has landed on the Red Planet. The one-ton rover, hanging by ropes from a rocket backpack, touched down onto Mars Sunday to end a 36-week flight and begin a two-year investigation. The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) spacecraft that carried Curiosity succeeded in every step of the most complex landing ever attempted on Mars, including the final severing of the bridle cords and flyaway maneuver of the rocket backpack. "Today, the wheels of Curiosity have begun to blaze the trail for human footprints on Mars.

Curiosity, the most sophisticated rover ever built, is now on the surface of the Red Planet, where it will seek to answer age-old questions about whether life ever existed on Mars -- or if the planet can sustain life in the future," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. "This is an amazing achievement, made possible by a team of scientists and engineers from around the world and led by the extraordinary men and women of NASA and our Jet Propulsion Laboratory. President Obama has laid out a bold vision for sending humans to Mars in the mid-2030's, and today's landing marks a significant step toward achieving this goal." Curiosity landed at 10:32 p.m. Aug. 5, PDT, (1:32 a.m. EDT Aug. 6) near the foot of a mountain three miles tall and 96 miles in diameter inside Gale Crater. During a nearly two-year prime mission, the rover will investigate whether the region ever offered conditions favorable for microbial life. "The Seven Minutes of Terror has turned into the Seven Minutes of Triumph," said NASA Associate Administrator for Science John Grunsfeld.

"My immense joy in the success of this mission is matched only by overwhelming pride I feel for the women and men of the mission's team." Curiosity returned its first view of Mars, a wide-angle scene of rocky ground near the front of the rover. More images are anticipated in the next several days as the mission blends observations of the landing site with activities to configure the rover for work and check the performance of its instruments and mechanisms. "Our Curiosity is talking to us from the surface of Mars," said MSL Project Manager Peter Theisinger of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The landing takes us past the most hazardous moments for this project, and begins a new and exciting mission to pursue its scientific objectives." Confirmation of Curiosity's successful landing came in communications relayed by NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter and received by the Canberra, Australia, antenna station of NASA's Deep Space Network. Curiosity carries 10 science instruments with a total mass 15 times as large as the science payloads on the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity. Some of the tools are the first of their kind on Mars, such as a laser-firing instrument for checking elemental composition of rocks from a distance.

The rover will use a drill and scoop at the end of its robotic arm to gather soil and powdered samples of rock interiors, then sieve and parcel out these samples into analytical laboratory instruments inside the rover. To handle this science toolkit, Curiosity is twice as long and five times as heavy as Spirit or Opportunity. The Gale Crater landing site places the rover within driving distance of layers of the crater's interior mountain. Observations from orbit have identified clay and sulfate minerals in the lower layers, indicating a wet history. The mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The rover was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. For more information on the mission, visit: and . Follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at: Curiosity rover scores touchdown on Mars - Technology & science - Space | NBC News Mast Camera (MastCam) T.A. Dutch Slager / NASA / JPL-Caltech This view of the Curiosity rover's remote sensing mast shows the ChemCam in the white box at top, and the two cameras of the Mastcam system just below. Additional navigation cameras are placed farther outward from the Mastcam cameras.

The MastCam is Curiosity's workhorse imaging tool. It will capture high-resolution color pictures and video of the Martian landscape, which scientists will study and laypeople will gawk at. MastCam consists of two camera systems mounted on a mast that rises above Curiosity's main body, so the instrument will have a good view of the Red Planet environment as the rover chugs through it. MastCam images will also help the mission team drive and operate Curiosity. ( Photos of NASA's Curiosity Rover ) Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) NASA / JPL-Caltech The Curiosity rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager will acquire color close-up images of rocks and surface materials. A Swiss Army knife is shown for scale. MAHLI will function much like a high-powered magnifying glass, allowing Earthbound scientists to get up-close looks at Martian rocks and soil. The instrument will take color pictures of features as tiny as 12.5 microns — smaller than the width of a human hair. MAHLI sits on the end of Curiosity's five-jointed, 7-foot (2.1-meter) robotic arm, which is itself a marvel of engineering.

So mission scientists will be able to point their high-tech hand lens pretty much wherever they want. Mars Descent Imager (MARDI) NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS The Mars Descent Imager is flying on the Curiosity rover. A Swiss Army knife is included in the picture for purposes of showing scale. MARDI, a small camera located on Curiosity's main body, will record video of the rover's descent to the Martian surface (which will be accomplished with the help of a hovering, rocket-powered sky crane). ( Video: Curiosity's Peculiar Landing ) MARDI will click on a mile or two above the ground, as soon as Curiosity jettisons its heat shield. The instrument will then take video at five frames per second until the rover touches down. The footage will help the MSL team plan Curiosity's Red Planet rovings, and it should also provide information about the geological context of the landing site, the 100-mile-wide (160-km) Gale Crater . Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) NASA / JPL-Caltech This illustration of the mechanical configuration of the SAM shows the three instruments and several elements of the Chemical Separation and Processing Laboratory.

SAM is the heart of Curiosity; at 83 pounds (38 kilograms), it makes up about half of the rover's science payload. SAM is actually a suite of three separate instruments — a mass spectrometer, a gas chromatograph and a laser spectrometer. These instruments will search for carbon-containing compounds, the building blocks of life as we know it . They will also look for other elements associated with life on Earth, such as hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. The SAM instrument suite is located in Curiosity's main body. The rover's robotic arm will drop samples into SAM via an inlet on the rover's exterior. Some of these samples will come from the interior of rocks, powder bored out by a 2-inch (5-centimeter) drill situated at the end of the arm. None of Curiosity's predecessors could get deep into Martian rocks, so scientists are excited about the drill. "For a geologist that studies rocks, there's nothing better than getting inside," said MSL deputy project scientist Joy Crisp, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. NASA / JPL-Caltech Clean-room workers carefully steer the hoisted CheMin instrument toward its installation into the Curiosity rover.

CheMin will identify different types of minerals on Mars and quantify their abundance, which will help scientists better understand past environmental conditions on the Red Planet . Like SAM, CheMin has an inlet on Curiosity's exterior to accept samples delivered by the rover's robotic arm. The instrument will shine a fine X-ray beam through the sample, identifying minerals' crystalline structures based on how the X-rays diffract. "This is like magic to us," Crisp told Space.com. X-ray diffraction is a leading diagnostic technique for Earthbound geologists, she explained, but it hasn't made it to Mars yet. So CheMin should help Curiosity provide more definitive mineral characterizations than previous Mars rovers such as Spirit and Opportunity have been able to achieve. Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) NASA / JPL-Caltech An artist's conception shows the Curiosity rover's ChemCam firing its laser at Martian rock. For sheer coolness, it's tough to beat ChemCam. This instrument will fire a laser at Martian rocks from up to 30 feet (9 meters) away and analyze the composition of the vaporized bits. ChemCam will thus enable Curiosity to study rocks that are out of reach of its flexible robotic arm.

It will also help the mission team determine from afar whether or not they want to send the rover over to investigate a particular landform. ChemCam is composed of several different parts. The laser sits on Curiosity's mast, along with a camera and a small telescope. Three spectrographs sit in the rover's body, connected to the mast components by fiber optics. The spectrographs will analyze the light emitted by excited electrons in the vaporized rock samples. Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) NASA / JPL-Caltech The sensor head for the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer is installed during testing. The head is 7.8 centimeters or about 3 inches tall. APXS, which sits at the end of Curiosity's arm, will measure the abundances of various chemical elements in Martian rocks and dirt. Curiosity will place the instrument in contact with samples of interest, and APXS will shoot out X-rays and helium nuclei. This barrage will knock electrons in the sample out of their orbits, causing a release of X-rays. Scientists will be able to identify elements based on the characteristic energies of these emitted X-rays.

Spirit and Opportunity were outfitted with a previous version of APXS and used the instrument to help elucidate the prominent role water has played in shaping the Martian landscape. ( Latest Mars Photos From Spirit and Opportunity ) Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN) NASA / JPL-Caltech / Roscosmos This diagram shows how the Detector of Albedo Neutrons could be used to sense the presence of subsurface water on Mars. DAN, located near the back of Curiosity's main body, will help the rover search for ice and water-logged minerals beneath the Martian surface. The instrument will fire beams of neutrons at the ground, then note the speed at which these particles travel when they bounce back. Hydrogen atoms tend to slow neutrons down, so an abundance of sluggish neutrons would signal underground water or ice. DAN should be able to map out water concentrations as low as 0.1 percent at depths up to 6 feet (2 m). Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) NASA / JPL-Caltech The RAD instrument is mounted just below the Curiosity rover's top deck, with the charged particle telescope pointing toward the zenith. The toaster-size RAD is designed specifically to help prepare for future human exploration of Mars.

The instrument will measure and identify high-energy radiation of all types on the Red Planet, from fast-moving protons to gamma rays. RAD's observations will allow scientists to determine just how much radiation an astronaut would be exposed to on Mars . This information could also help researchers understand how much of a hurdle Mars' radiation environment might have posed to the origin and evolution of life on the Red Planet. Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) NASA This diagram shows the location of the REMS booms on the rover's mast, plus detailed views showing the location of wind, humidity and temperature sensors. This tool, which sits partway up Curiosity's mast, is a Martian weather station. REMS will measure atmospheric pressure, humidity, wind speed and direction, air temperature, ground temperature and ultraviolet radiation. All of this information will be integrated into daily and seasonal reports, allowing scientists to get a detailed look at the Martian environment. MSL Entry, Descent and Landing Instrumentation (MEDLI) Lockheed Martin The MEDLI instrument package is the black box in the middle left of this photo, which shows the heatshield for the Mars Science Laboratory.

MEDLI isn't one of Curiosity's 10 instruments, since it was built into the heat shield that protected the rover during its descent through the Martian atmosphere . But it's worth a few words here. MEDLI measured the temperatures and pressures that the heat shield experienced as the MSL spacecraft streaked through the Martian sky. This information can tell engineers how well the heat shield, and their models of the spacecraft's trajectory, performed. Researchers will use MEDLI data to improve designs for future Mars-bound spacecraft. You can follow Space.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter: @michaeldwall . Follow Space.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook . More from Space.com: Mars Rover Landing: Curiosity Lands Early Monday Morning (RECAP) | The Huffington Post Mars Rover Landing: Curiosity Lands Early Monday Morning (RECAP) 08/06/2012 12:26 am ET | Updated Aug 07, 2012 12k NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has touched down on the surface of the Red Planet, completing a 354-million-mile journey , and marking the beginning of a new era in planetary exploration.

President Obama released the following statement immediately after the landing: Tonight, on the planet Mars, the United States of America made history. The successful landing of Curiosity – the most sophisticated roving laboratory ever to land on another planet – marks an unprecedented feat of technology that will stand as a point of national pride far into the future. It proves that even the longest of odds are no match for our unique blend of ingenuity and determination. Tonight’s success, delivered by NASA, parallels our major steps forward towards a vision for a new partnership with American companies to send American astronauts into space on American spacecraft. That partnership will save taxpayer dollars while allowing NASA to do what it has always done best – push the very boundaries of human knowledge. And tonight’s success reminds us that our preeminence – not just in space, but here on Earth – depends on continuing to invest wisely in the innovation, technology, and basic research that has always made our economy the envy of the world. I congratulate and thank all the men and women of NASA who made this remarkable accomplishment a reality – and I eagerly await what Curiosity has yet to discover. But landing on Mars wasn't easy.

NASA engineers have actually come to refer to the entry, descent and landing (EDL) of the spacecraft as " seven minutes of terror ." Curiosity, which weighs a ton and is about the size of a small SUV, approached Mars at about 13,000 miles per hour. When the Martian atmosphere slowed the craft to about 900 miles per hour , a supersonic parachute deployed, slowing the craft even further. But the rover was still descending too quickly to land in one piece. After the rover separated from the parachute , rocket motors fired, continuing to slow the descent. Then, at about 60 feet above the surface, a "sky-crane" lowered the rover to its new home on the Red Planet. NASA rover successfully lowered to surface of Mars - CNET CNET NASA rover successfully lowered to surface of Mars NASA rover successfully lowered to surface of Mars In a technological tour de force, NASA's nuclear-powered Curiosity rover was lowered to the surface of Mars by a rocket-powered flying crane late Sunday to kick off a $2.5 billion mission.

Up Next Governments suck at social media, but you deserve some blame This is one of the first images from Curiosity on the surface of Mars, showing one of the rover's wheels (bottom right) and part of its power supply (top left). The top of the image is saturated, NASA says, because at the moment the cameras were pointed directly toward the sun. NASA PASADENA, Calif.--In an unparalleled technological triumph, a one-ton nuclear-powered rover the size of a small car was lowered to the surface of Mars on the end of a 25-foot-long bridle suspended from the belly of a rocket-powered flying crane late Sunday to kick off an unprecedented $2.5 billion mission. With flight controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory anxiously watching telemetry flowing in from Mars, 154 million miles away and 13.8 minutes after the fact, the Mars Science Laboratory rover -- Curiosity -- radioed confirmation of touchdown at 10:32 p.m. PDT (GMT-7; 1:32 a.m. EDT Monday).

NASA celebrates Curiosity's touchdown on Mars Flight controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory celebrate Curiosity, the Mars Science Laboratory rover, after it lands safely on the Red Planet at 10:32 p.m. PT Sunday. 2:11 Close Drag "Touchdown confirmed. We're safe on Mars!" said mission control commentator Allen Chen as the flight control team erupted in boisterous cheers and applause. "It's just absolutely incredible, it doesn't get any better than this," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. "I was a basket case in there, I was really on pins and needles. "It's a huge day for the nation, it's a huge day for all of our partners and it's a huge day for the American people," he said. "Everybody in the morning should be sticking their chests out, saying 'that's my rover on Mars.' Because it belongs to all of us." The target landing zone was the floor of Gale Crater near the base of a 3-mile-high mound of layered rock that represents hundreds of thousands to tens of millions of years of martian history, a frozen record of the planet's changing environment and evolution.

While the rover's exact position was not immediately known, there were no obvious problems during the dramatic entry, descent and landing and Curiosity presumably made it down inside a predicted footprint measuring four miles wide and 12 miles long -- a pinpoint landing compared to previous missions. The seven-minute descent to the surface provided high drama as flight controllers monitored telemetry from the spacecraft, relayed through NASA's aging Mars Odyssey orbiter. As each major milestone ticked off, engineers clapped and cheered, increasingly optimistic as the spacecraft passed one hurdle after another. Adam Steltzner, the engineer in charge of Curiosity's entry, descent and landing team, reacts to telemetry confirming touchdown. NASA "Vehicle reports entry interface," Chen said as the descent vehicle plunged into the discernible atmosphere at a blistering 13,200 mph. "At this time it will begin pressurizing the propulsion system to increase the thrust of the system. It'll use that for all the maneuvering in the atmosphere we're about to do... We are standing by for guidance start and the start of guided entry." A few moments later: "We are beginning to feel the atmosphere as we go in here," Chen said. "The vehicle has just reported via tones that it has started guided entry.

At this time, the vehicle is beginning to steer its way to the target... It's starting its first bank reversal." As the spacecraft guided itself through two banking roll reversals to bleed off velocity as it zeroed in on the target landing zone, Chen noted "we have seen peak deceleration. We've passed through peak heating and peak deceleration. It is reporting we are seeing Gs on the order of 11 to 12 Earth Gs." Guided entry then ended as expected and the spacecraft's huge parachute deployed and inflated as it fell toward Mars at 1.7 times the speed of sound, quickly decelerating as required. "Stand by for parachute deploy... Parachute deploy!" Chen reported as the flight control team applauded. "Thrusters have been re-enabled, we will control attitude on chute, we are decelerating. About 10 kilometers (10.2 miles) and descending, we are at 150 meters per second (335 mph)..." "We are nine kilometers (5.6 miles) and descending... We have acquired the ground with the radar (applause). Heat shield has separated, we have found the ground.

We're standing by to prime the MLE engines in preparation for powered flight. We're down to 90 meters per second (201 mph) at an altitude of 6.9 kilometers (4.3 miles) and descending." Right on schedule As Curiosity fell, Earth dropped below the martian horizon, cutting off simple tones sent back by the spacecraft to mark major events. But the Mars Odyssey orbiter continued beaming back an uninterrupted flow of telemetry, giving flight engineers a ringside seat. "We're down to 86 meters per second (192 mph) at an altitude of four kilometers (2.5 miles) and descending," Chen said. "We have lost tones from Earth at this time, this is expected. We're continuing on Odyssey telemetry... Standing by for backshell separation..." Right on schedule, less than a mile above the surface, Curiosity and its "sky crane" backpack fell away from the parachute and backshell and an instant later, eight rocket engines, two on each corner ignited to stabilize the craft and slow it to a sedate 1.7 mph. "We are in powered flight," Chen reported, prompting more applause.

"We're at an altitude of one kilometer (0.6 miles) and descending about 70 meters per second (157 mph)... Down to 50 meters per second (112 mph), 500 meters (1,640 feet) in altitude, standing by for sky crane... We found a nice flat place, we're coming in ready for sky crane... Down to 10 meters per second (22 mph), 40 meters altitude (131 feet)... "Sky crane has started (applause)... Descending at about point 75 meters per second (1.7 mph) as expected... Expecting bridle cut shortly." As Curiosity's wheels settled to the surface, the flight computer sent commands to cut the cables connecting it to the sky crane descent stage, which then flew away to a crash landing as planned. Finally, after checking telemetry and confirming its status, Chen reported "touchdown confirmed.

We're safe on Mars!" Amid jubilant applause and cheers, he added: "Time to see where Curiosity will take us!" While engineers did not expect pictures right away, blurry low-resolution thumbnails from the rover's rear hazard avoidance cameras were transmitted within minutes of touchdown showing a wheel on the surface of Mars. One of the initial images downlinked from Curiosity's hazard avoidance cameras, showing the rover's shadow on the surface of Mars. High-resolution pictures are expected later, after extensive tests and checkout. NASA "Odyssey data is still strong," Chen reported. "Odyssey is nice and high in the sky. At this time we're standing by for images..." "We've got thumbnails," someone said. "We are wheels down on Mars!" Chen reported. "Oh my God," someone else said in the background. Exploring the crater floor and climbing Mount Sharp over the next two years, Curiosity will look for signs of past or present habitability and search for carbon compounds, the building blocks of life as it is known on Earth. But before the rover's geological fieldwork can begin, engineers will devote several weeks to carefully checking out Curiosity's complex systems and testing its state-of-the-art instruments and cameras.

"I can guarantee you in the days, months and years from now you'll be hearing an incredible science story," said Project Scientist John Grotzinger. "The money, two-and-a-half billion dollars, we don't put it in the rover and send it to mars, we spend it on Earth. "This whole enterprise, if you divide by every woman, man and child in this country, comes out to be the cost of a movie (about $7). I speak on behalf of all my colleagues in science, that's a movie I want to see!" Curiosity's landing represented the most challenging robotic descent to the surface of another world ever attempted, a tightly choreographed sequence of autonomously executed events with little margin for error. But it all worked and the cheers that rocked the halls of the mission operations center signaled the pride -- and relief -- felt by the flight control team, engineers and scientists who labored for nearly a decade to design, build, launch and land the Mars Science Laboratory. "Today, right now, the wheels of Curiosity have begun to blaze the trail for human footprints on Mars," Bolden said at a post-landing news conference.

"Curiosity, the most sophisticated rover ever built is now on the surface of the red planet where it will seek to answer age old questions about whether life ever existed there on Mars or if the planet can sustain life in the future. This an amazing achievement." 14 Curiosity's autonomous 'seven minutes of terror' (pictures) John Holdren, President Obama's science adviser, said the landing was a "technological tour de force." "It's an enormous step forward in planetary exploration, nobody has ever done anything like this," he said. "This lander is vastly bigger, vastly more capable, much more complicated to bring in, many new technologies had to work in perfect succession and perfect synchronization for this to happen. "This is by far the most capable device, set of instruments, we've put up there for determining whether Mars every could have supported life. ... We stand to learn a tremendous amount from this Curiosity Mars Science Laboratory. It's going to do incredible things." While precise numbers were not expected until the telemetry could be analyzed, the entry, descent and landing appeared to follow the EDL team's script without any major problems. "It looked extremely clean," said Adam Seltzner, the lead engineer on the entry, descent and landing team.

"Our navigation error was on the low side of our expectation. ... Our powered flight appears to have been excellent. We landed with 140 kilograms of fuel reserves out of a total of 400 kilos we carried in. "It looked good, in short, good and clean," he said. During the final hundred feet of entry, descent and landing, the Curiosity rover was lowered from its rocket-powered "sky crane" directly to the surface of Mars as seen in this computer animation. NASA graphic The timing of events in the following description were predicted and may be slightly different from the actual values, which depended on atmospheric conditions and other factors. But given the successful touchdown, the spacecraft lived up to the team's sky-high expectations. The Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft consisted of an interplanetary cruise stage, providing power and communications during the long-flight out from Earth, and the Curiosity rover, cocooned inside a heat shield and aeroshell to protect it from the extreme temperatures of atmospheric entry. After covering 352 million miles since launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla., last November, the cruise stage separated from the lander around 10 p.m.

But because of the distance between Earth and Mars -- 154 million miles -- it took radio signals confirming critical events 13.8 minutes to reach the flight control team at JPL. That translated into 10:14 p.m. "Earth-received time." One minute later, thrusters fired to stop the entry vehicle's 2-rpm rotation and the spacecraft re-oriented itself heat shield forward and slammed into the discernible atmosphere at 10:24 p.m. at an altitude of about 78 miles and a velocity of 13,200 mph. At that point, it was about 390 miles -- seven minutes -- from touchdown in Gale Crater. The guided entry The Mars Science Laboratory was the first spacecraft to attempt a so-called guided entry on another planet. To control its lift, which allowed Curiosity's flight computer to make a pinpoint landing, two 165-pound tungsten weights were ejected just before entry to change the spacecraft's center of mass. During hypersonic flight, thruster firings controlled the orientation of the vehicle's "lift vector" to compensate for actual atmospheric conditions as it precisely controlled its path toward Gale Crater.

Related stories Curiosity Rover's New Address: Yellowknife, Mars NASA Rover's New Red Planet Address: Yellowknife, Mars By Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer | August 11, 2012 06:50am ET MORE Before Curiosity landed on Mars, scientists divided its potential landing zone into 151 "quadrangles" measuring about 1 mile on a side. Curiosity landed on quadrangle 51, which is now known as Yellowknife. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech The patch of Mars where NASA's Curiosity rover touched down Sunday night (Aug. 5) has a name: Yellowknife. The moniker is a tribute to the capital of Canada's Northwest Territories, a city that has long served as the jumping-off point for geologists interested in studying North America's oldest rocks , scientists said. "If you ask, 'What is the port of call you leave from to go on the great missions of geological mapping to the oldest rocks in North America?' — it's Yellowknife," Curiosity chief scientist John Grotzinger, of Caltech in Pasadena, told reporters Friday (Aug. 10).

In the home stretch of Curiosity's eight-month space cruise, Grotzinger and his team divided the rover's predicted landing zone inside Mars ' Gale Crater into a set of 151 "quadrangles," each of which measures about 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) on a side. The idea was to break the work of characterizing the landing zone into manageable chunks. The Curiosity rover landed on Quadrangle 51, which the team has dubbed Yellowknife. Curiosity's main mission is to determine if the Gale Crater area could ever have supported microbial life. Mars appears hostile to Earth-like life today, at least on the surface. But things might have been different in the past, which is why the rover team is drawing connections with the 2.7-billion-year-old rocks of northwest Canada. These are the first two full-resolution images of the Martian surface from the Navigation cameras on NASA's Curiosity rover, which are located on the rover's "head" or mast. The rim of Gale Crater can be seen in the distance beyond the pebbly ground. Images released Aug. 8, 2012.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech "We went to Mars to really get at the ancient geology, because that's where we think there might be evidence for past environments similar to on Earth," said Curiosity deputy project scientist Joy Crisp, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "So it's connected in that way — simply, ancient rocks that might preserve evidence of past environments favorable for life." Curiosity will likely be in Yellowknife for a while (the rover won't even take its first drive for two weeks or so), but eventually the six-wheeled robot will leave the quadrangle to explore more of Gale and to investigate Mount Sharp, the mysterious 3-mile-high (5 km) mountain that rises from the crater's center. The mission team is not in a big rush. Curiosity's prime mission is slated to last about two Earth years, and the rover's nuclear power source may keep it roaming for considerably longer than that if no key parts break down, researchers have said. Mission Team - Mars Science Laboratory Mission Team Mission > Mission Team MISSION Mission Team Landing Night Engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., celebrate the landing of NASA's Curiosity rover on the Red Planet.

1 / 17 Curiosity Team in Mission Control The Mars Science Lab team cheers after learning the Curiosity rover has landed safely on Mars and see the rover's first images start coming in. 2 / 17 Hands Held High Mission scientists, flight controllers, managers and administrators raise their hands to a cheering crowd at a news conference following the successful landing of NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars. 3 / 17 Hi-Five! The Curiosity rover’s Entry, Descent and Landing team (EDL) arrives at the post-landing press conference to cheers and celebration. 4 / 17 Tears of Joy Miguel San Martin, Chief Engineer for Guidance, Navigation and Control for the Curiosity rover, pauses to hold back tears as he leads the Entry, Descent and Landing team into the post-landing news briefing. 5 / 17 Engineers Celebrate Curiosity&#39s Landing The Entry, Descent and Landing team gathers to celebrate prior to a post-landing press briefing. 6 / 17 &#39We&#39ve Got Thumbnails' Scientists are overjoyed after seeing the Curiosity rover’s first initial images showing a wheel resting on the Martian soil.

7 / 17 Science Team Celebrates Landing Members of the Curiosity science team jump out of their seats and cheer when they hear that the Curiosity rover has successfully landed on the Martian surface. 8 / 17 Parachute Deployment! Excitement builds at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory when news of a successful parachute deployment from the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft reaches the science team. 9 / 17 Team Gathers in Control Room As the Curiosity rover hurdles toward Mars on the last leg of its journey, the Mars Science Laboratory Mission Operations Team assemble in Mission Control at the Space Flight Operations Facility at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. 10 / 17 Getting Ready for Landing The Mars Science Laboratory mission team prepares for entry, descent and landing at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Space Flight Operations Facility in Pasadena, Calif., as Curiosity is hours from landing. 11 / 17 Curiosity&#39s EDL Team Engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., on the day of NASA's Curiosity rover landing on the Red Planet. The rover touched down on Mars the evening of Aug. 5 PDT (morning of Aug. 6 EDT).

12 / 17 The Entry, Descent and Landing War Room This image shows Curiosity's Entry, Descent and Landing (EDL) "war room" and its staff. On the night of Aug. 5, 2012 PDT (early morning Aug. 6 EDT), 34 engineers gathered in this room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., to support the landing. 13 / 17 Meet Many of the Women of Mars! This picture features some of the women working on the Curiosity rover, taken in the "Mars Yard," a simulated martian landscape right here at JPL. 14 / 17 Sifting through the "Martian Soil" It takes a whole team to operate Curiosity's arm. Pictured here are just a few of the team members who put their "muscle" to work every day to help operate Curiosity's arm on Mars. 15 / 17 Check Out What&#39s in MY Garage!

This is a picture of some of the women working on the Curiosity rover posing with Curiosity's mobility double, "Scarecrow," used to test drive under different soil conditions in the JPL "Mars Yard." 16 / 17 Hanging Out with the Test Rover Pictured here are a few of the women working on Mars with the Curiosity test rover model in the background. The image was taken in the "Mars Yard" where the ground test model of the Curiosity rover is housed. 17 / 17 While numerous individuals make vital contributions without which this mission could not occur, key team members include: Jet Propulsion Laboratory MSL Management During Surface Operations Project Manager Mars Rover Curiosity Measures Red Planet Radiation Mars Rover Curiosity Measures Red Planet Radiation Mike Wall Pin it Share This artist concept features NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover, a mobile robot for investigating Mars' past or present ability to sustain microbial life. More NASA's Curiosity rover has made its first measurements of the radiation environment at Mars' surface, gathering information that could help prepare future astronauts for stays on the Red Planet. Curiosity's Radiation Assessment Detector instrument, or RAD, collected data for about 3 1/2 hours on Wednesday (Aug.

8), researchers said. Curiosity touched down inside Mars' huge Gale Crater late Sunday night. The mission team hasn't had time to fully analyze RAD's measurements yet, so they remain in relatively raw form, scientists said. "This is really just a snapshot, but we do see, you know, the exciting elements of what we're going to be collecting and accumulating over the next months and years as we continue on with our nominal mission," RAD principal investigator Don Hassler, of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., told reporters Wednesday. "So stay tuned for future results," Hassler added. Radiation levels are much higher on Mars than they are on Earth, for two main reasons. Mars' atmosphere is just 1 percent as thick as our planet's, and Mars does not have a worldwide magnetic field. As a result, many more fast-moving charged particles reach the Red Planet's surface. The toaster-size RAD's main job is to measure just how high those radiation levels are, to give future Mars colonists a better idea of what they're getting themselves into. The instrument was designed primarily to help pave the way for human exploration of Mars , a key priority of NASA.

The Curiosity team also turned RAD on for most of the rover's eight-month space cruise, to see what radiation dose travelers could expect to receive during the long flight to Mars. RAD is one of Curiosity's 10 science instruments, the rest of which are geared toward helping the $2.5 billion rover answer one main question: Could the Gale Crater area ever have supported microbial life? Curiosity's prime mission is slated to last roughly two Earth years. However, its nuclear power source could keep the six-wheeled robot roaming for significantly longer than that, provided that key parts don't break down, scientists have said. To interpret the RAD measurements correctly, researchers will have to account for the background radiation produced by Curiosity's plutonium-powered radioisotope thermoelectric generator, or RTG, Hassler said.

Question: What was the name of the NASA rover that touched down on the surface of Mars Sunday night?
Answer: Curiosity